Error & Debug: The Ruler I Quietly Accepted

I've had more time lately to look back, and I've noticed how much I've changed over the years.

The older I get, the more I realize how little I really know myself. I can see how I look and feel what I feel, but what I actually think deep down, which attitudes I've carried for years, what bad habits kick in when things go wrong? I know those a lot less well than I assumed.

After going round and round on it, I think I've figured out one thing: I don't have to become somebody impressive. I can be okay with the ordinary person I am.

01 / Error | The Notice on the Old House

I didn't start taking my life seriously until after thirty.

They say you're supposed to "have it together" by thirty. I didn't. Not married, no real career yet. It's 2026 now, forty is right around the corner, and compared to a few years ago I'm not that far from where I started. By society's standards, I'm just an unremarkable guy.

Where I grew up, in the countryside, if you reach a certain age without getting married or having kids, people start to think something's off. It's less a personal choice than homework with a due date. If you haven't handed it in, people ask why, then start guessing: a health problem? A personality problem? Something you don't want to talk about?

I've heard plenty of it:

"You're not getting any younger. Why aren't you married yet? Is something wrong?"

"Settle down first, then build your career. Two people working together, things will work out."

"Wait much longer and your parents will be too old to help with the kids."

Some people even tie marriage and kids to carrying on the family name, as if skipping it means letting someone down.

Behind all of it is an unspoken order of operations: get married at the right age, have kids, then sort out the home and career bit by bit. Miss a step and it feels like something broke.

My parents are actually pretty understanding and have never really pushed me. Still, living in that environment, it's hard to stay untouched. Some standards don't need anyone repeating them. They're already baked into the gossip and the comparisons. And I only realized this later: even if you don't agree with a standard, after long enough you start measuring yourself against it without noticing.

This past April I took some time off and went home. My dad said he was heading to the old house the next day to check on the crops, and I said I'd come along.

We rode over on the electric scooter. Weeds had taken over around the house, and the yard wasn't as neat as it used to be. On the wall was a notice from the village committee saying the building was unsafe.

Standing there, it suddenly hit me: my parents are really getting old.

I'd always felt that as long as they were there, home was there too, and wherever I ended up, I'd have somewhere to go back to. But time doesn't wait just because we've gotten used to things. Their hair has gone white, they're not as strong as they were, and sometimes their memory slips. Things I took for granted have been changing all along.

Every time I go home, my feelings are mixed. I know they understand me, but what they really think, I honestly don't know.

I hope they worry a little less. And I hope I don't end up living by other people's expectations just because I don't want them to worry.

My parents are getting older. That's just time. I'm not married and don't have kids. That's just where I am right now. Both are true, but neither needs to be somebody's fault.

02 / Debug | Checking Without Needing to Be Perfect

If Error is noticing that something's thrown an exception, then Debug is tracing back through the process to find which step went wrong.

The first thing I wanted to check wasn't why I'm not married with kids. It was the judgment that's always been floating around me: if you don't live this way, does that mean your life has gone wrong?

Slowly I worked out that society has its approved ways of living and families have their own expectations, but those don't have to fit everyone. I also don't need to prove my choices are absolutely right in order to prove I'm not wrong. What matters more is figuring out what I want and what I'm willing to take on because of it.

Living well in the present doesn't have to mean doing something big.

Take an ordinary Saturday. Nothing planned, I cook a bowl of noodles, tidy up the place, go for a run in the evening. The day just passes. There's nothing to show anyone, but I know what I'm doing and I can run my own life. At least in moments like that, I don't have to explain to anyone why my life looks different from theirs.

But other people's stares and opinions have a way of creeping in.

A guy pushing forty who isn't married and has no real career becomes a topic of speculation. Something wrong with his health? Gay? Broke? Some secret he won't talk about? If you stay quiet, people assume they're right. If you explain, you've just handed them something new to talk about.

And once the guessing is done, there are the demands. A man's supposed to be decisive and tough, never show weakness. Be a little sensitive and you're not manly enough. Hesitate a little and you've got no backbone.

I'm not immune to that stuff either.

When I was in college, one Spring Festival, I rode the scooter to visit relatives with my younger sister. It was raining, I was going a bit fast, and the wheel suddenly slid out. We both went down.

She was a little dazed. I quickly patted her and told her not to be scared.

Later a relative said, "He's a boy after all. Stays calm when something happens, and looks after his sister."

I just smiled.

The relative had tied my behavior to being "a boy." But what I remember is the wheel slipping and losing control, the fear as we fell, and my heart only slowly settling once I knew my sister was okay.

If that day were recorded in a log, it would read: rain, speed a bit high, wheel slid, two people down, I asked my sister if she was alright. "Stayed calm" isn't in the log. That was an annotation added later by someone else.

A person can be brave and scared at the same time. That day I was both. I don't want to keep splitting myself up, putting one part on display to meet other people's expectations and hiding the rest.

Last month there was a get-together with friends, and almost all the talk was mortgages, school districts, extracurriculars, how to manage the household. Most of my friends are married now, with careers and families of their own. I couldn't join in, and didn't especially want to. The group chat is still lively, but I've been saying less and less. That doesn't necessarily mean we've drifted apart. We're just living different lives now, and what we care about has slowly changed.

I get why those things matter to them, and I don't think there's anything wrong with their choices. In the same way, I'd like my life to be understood, not something I have to keep explaining just because it's different from most people's.

At this age, of course I think about the future and weigh my situation and needs. But I don't want to do something just because everyone around me is doing it.

Debugging isn't about turning myself into some standard answer. It's about sorting out what I genuinely believe from what I've just heard so often that I started accepting it.

03 / Run | Running With Bugs

The debugging has reached a stopping point. Time to run it again.

At least after this round of thinking, I've started looking at myself differently.

I'm still an ordinary person. I'm not married, I haven't built much of a career, and I live alone. I haven't suddenly figured out some answer that fixes everything.

But I'm less in a hurry to prove my choices are right, and I no longer feel I have to arrange my life a certain way to earn approval.

I'm starting to accept that there's no single path that works for everyone. Getting married, having kids, building a home can be a life someone chooses with care. Living alone can be a life someone else chooses with just as much care. They don't have to be sorted into right and wrong.

Of course, accepting myself doesn't mean I've stopped thinking about the future, or that I'm off the hook for my choices. I still have to face reality: what happens as my parents get older, how I plan for my own future. I have to think about all of it.

It's just that I don't have to use anyone else's ruler for it anymore.

Maybe really knowing yourself isn't finding an answer with no flaws in it. Maybe it's finally letting go of the idea that you have to be that answer.

Accepting being ordinary isn't giving up. It's taking the energy I used to spend explaining myself to others and putting it into living my own life well.